Kamen Rider Tarock
by starofjustice
Summary: Liss Decker doesn't think much of the adults in her life, but her entire world changes-literally-when she receives a relic that carries with it a mystery beyond anything and everything Liss thought possible.
1. Chapter 1

Kamen Rider Tarock Chapter One

Disclaimer: I don't own or make any claim of ownership of the Kamen Rider series. Kamen Rider Tarock and its characters belong to me, and may not be used without express permission. But don't be afraid to ask. I also do not necessarily share the beliefs of any character in my stories, and at least in the case of the ones in this story, do not necessarily endorse anything they do.

Author's Note: Going for a slightly more "traditional" Rider series than Altis with this one.

It started out kind of gray that day. Those are the kinds of days when I don't feel like I could really spend all day in school with people trying to tell me things I'd never need to know.

The guys who do security at my school think they're smarter than the kids they watch, but that's why it's so easy to sneak away if you're fast and if you know how to disappear in a crowd. I'm sort of used to disappearing, makes life easier for most of the people I know.

Not the security guys or teachers think so when the end of the day rolls around, though. Not that stuff like that usually bothers me.

I was six blocks away from school before I looked back. Nobody was behind me, but that was normal. It was starting to drizzle, and I sighed a little. After a minute I forgot I even got on a bus that morning.

Cars drove past, the wipers already beating so fast on most of them you could hear them from the other side of the street. People pulled their hats down and jogged past me to get wherever they were going and splashed in the puddles that were already showing up on the sidewalk. I don't hang out in the nice parts of town. There are lots of places for puddles on the sidewalks.

It meant I was more or less alone, and that was okay with me. The days were starting to get shorter, and that meant rainy days were cooler. For me at least, it was okay to get a little wet if it meant not being baked by the heat coming off the asphalt.

I walked for a while until I saw a little brick building with a cheesy hand-painted wood sign of a smiling car hanging over the door. It said "DECKER ENGINES" underneath in thick black letters.

There it was, my stupid home away from stupid home.

The little bell over the door rang as I went in. I barely heard it, and I don't think the tall skinny girl in dirty coveralls heard it either. If I didn't come in there all the time I probably wouldn't even know she was tall until she heard me kick an oil can across the floor and stand up from the motorcycle she was working on to glare at me.

She sighed. I'd learned to hear it as "hi."

"What are you doing here, Liss? Sooner or later somebody's going to think to look for you here, you know."

"And then they won't, because they'd have to pretend you exist again," I smiled at her, sat down in one of the creaky chairs in her waiting room, and picked up an ancient car magazine I'd read at least fifty times.

She shook her head and went back to work on the motorcycle. "You're crazy, Liss. At least think about your future."

"I am. What am I gonna learn there that's actually gonna help me later?"

I read most of the magazine again and listened to the rain pick up outside. She knew she wouldn't win that argument, she wasn't my mom. I knew she wouldn't turn me in, either.

She couldn't stand my mom.

After a minute I got bored. "Paige?" I called into the garage.

"Yeah?"

"When's the bike gonna be ready?"

She laughed. "Why? You think I'd let you ride it first? Guess again, Liss."

"Aw c'mon, don't start being lame _now_."

"You can't rush a masterpiece anyway," Paige said. "You can't even get parts like the ones I'm using for this. I had to make 'em myself."

"Really?"

"Yup."

"Not bad for a little two-car place like this," I said.

Paige gave me this look all of a sudden, kind of unsure. Like maybe she said too much. "Yeah, not bad huh? After I sell this baby, though, I can buy a huge place, or move to California or something."

My stomach clenched. "You're gonna _sell_ it?"

Paige sighed then, irritated at me. "Come on, Liss. You've got the world all figured out, what did you think I was going to do with it? Maybe I don't want to be stuck here in this crappy little garage, fixing idiots' junked old cars til I'm old and gray."

"I…I'm sorry…"

"I know, Liss, I know," Paige sighed, but she sounded a lot more relaxed this time. "You've got to stop messing around sometime though, unless you're planning to break into organized crime or something."

"I'd be running this stupid town in a month!" I smiled.

"Take you that long, huh?" Paige smirked, but then the phone in the waiting room rang. Paige got up, wiped her hands and ran over to answer it. "Hello? Decker Engines." I didn't hear who was talking to her, obviously, but right away her face got all serious.

"Liss? Why don't you go get us some lunch," she said and pushed a twenty across the desk at me.

"Already?"

She covered the mouth of the phone. "Just do it. Please."

Just like that, I was out of there. She might hassle me sometimes, but Paige is the coolest person ever. You probably think you know someone cooler, but let me tell you right now, you're wrong. If she wanted to be alone, I left her alone.

But that didn't mean I wasn't gonna find out what it was about sometime.

The rain was coming down even harder when I went outside and started walking toward the block that had all the fast restaurants. I stopped at the corner to see if anybody was coming, but had to look really hard because the rain picked up even more all of a sudden. I ran across the street but after I was sure I got to the other side, I realized I didn't feel that little lift of being on the sidewalk again.

I kept walking, but still, nothing. I tried going to my right, because now it was raining bullets and I couldn't see right in front of my face. I ran until I saw a big dark shape I hoped was a building in front of me, but stopped when I noticed there weren't lights on in the windows. How could there not be lights on? It was the middle of the day and it was pouring rain. There were lights right next to me, after all.

Yeah, lights right next to me. I ran, jumped away from the lights, and landed on my stomach in a puddle. A big black car with metal bars covering the windshield pulled up next to where I landed. It had police lights on top, but the covering was cracked open on the side closer to me.

"Are you crazy, kid?" some guy inside the car yelled at me. "Jumpin' in front of police cars the hot new thing?"

"Am I crazy? Are you idiots trying to make your job easier running people over?"

I shouldn't have said that. I know better than to pick fights with cops, but I was soaked and almost got run down by a very weird cop car. They probably weren't cops at all. It sounded like the driver grunted at me and drove down the street. He was probably aiming to splash me driving through the puddle I landed in, but I jumped back. It would've been pointless with how wet I was anyway.

I started walking again and hoped after a minute the places where I usually went for lunch when I ditched to see Paige would show up next to me and I could go in to get out of the rain for a while. I was getting kind of worried. Still no lights anywhere in the rain, not even when I got to the end of the next block.

This was impossible. I walked over to the closest building, felt around for the door and twisted the knob as hard as I could. It broke off and the door dangled off the top hinge. There was nothing inside the building and the windows all had plywood put up over them. I went in anyway just to wait for the rain to let up a little.

None of this made any sense. Yeah, this was getting toward the really crappy part of town, but there weren't any empty buildings on that block. At least, not since the last time I blew off school to hang out with Paige. Which hadn't really been that long ago.

After a while the rain stopped coming down so hard, and I went back out to see if I could recognize anything. I bet I don't have to tell you things were even weirder when I could see the buildings around me.

I recognized the other buildings, but they looked a lot older and more beat up than the last time I saw them. They had wood over their windows too, and one was even partway caved in where a streetlight fell on it. The taco place where I was gonna go pick up lunch was still there, kind of, except somebody's ripped the schedule off the door and all the tables were gone.

No way! It was packed the last time I was there! Something really, really weird had to be going on.

That's when things picked to get even weirder.

Something-it was big and black and round-came around the corner of the street. Except it was stuck to the wall of a building on the second floor. I noticed it had legs, lots of skinny legs. And eyes. Lots of big, shiny black eyes.

You probably think I'm one of those people who likes to pretend they're not scared of anything. I'll tell you something, I was more scared than I ever was about anything when I realized there was a gigantic spider looking right at me then.

Then, it jumped.

I knew I was gonna die. Even if I got out of the way, that thing looked really fast. Somehow, it was even worse cuz I was gonna die without even finding out what was going on. Something with fake cops, and all the buildings turning all crappy, and giant spiders…

Just before it splattered me, something ran into the spider. It was a guy, in this black suit with red armor on top. I couldn't see his face, because his helmet covered his whole face with these huge yellow eyes. And he had this big, big sword.

"Stay close!" he said, but he didn't take his eyes off the spider. It ran at him but as when it got close he ran around its side and cut off two of its legs with his sword. This purple blood dripped out, but the legs he just cut off kept moving around on the ground even after he cut em off!

One of them jumped over and hit me in the legs, and I fell down. The guy with the sword turned and looked at me, but the spider jumped on his back all of a sudden and bit him on the neck. He held his sword upside down and stabbed it, and it jumped off and ran away. He moaned and I had to put his arm over my shoulder so he didn't just fall down.

"Over there, quick," he gasped and pointed to one of the buildings. I kicked the door open and dragged him. I set the guy down next to a wall, and even through that helmet I could hear him panting.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"It got through the suit…I didn't think that was possible," the guy said like he didn't even hear me.

"Hey! I asked you a question!"

"It's too late for me," he said. He pulled on his belt buckle and when it came loose his whole suit disappeared. It was too dark in there for me to see how he looked, except he had a huge purple spot on his neck. He held out the belt buckle, and I took it.

"Guard that with your life," he whispered, like it hurt too much to talk any louder. "Soon…soon they'll give you answers…" Then he fell over, and I didn't have to guess he wasn't breathing anymore.

I went to the door and looked out to see if that spider was back, and when I was sure it wasn't I looked at the buckle he gave me. It looked really old, like somebody made it for a king hundreds of years ago or something, but at the same time it looked like he'd taken really good care of it. Or maybe had it restored really well.

There was this thing on the front, like a crystal ball. Inside was a gold picture of what looked like a sword. That sorta made sense, since he had a sword and everything. I tilted it back and something fell out of it. It was a card, the size of one in any regular deck. Except it was just that sword picture on a red background. Did that make the belt buckle work or something…?

I put the belt buckle and sword card inside my jacket. By then the rain had totally stopped, but it was still gray out. I started going back toward Paige's, because at that point I had no idea what was going on, and going back the way I came seemed like the only thing that might possibly take me back to where things were still kind of sane.

The spider was nowhere around, so I made a break for it. I stopped at the end of the block and ducked into an alley to look for the spider, but it looked like it was still scared off from losing its legs. But before I came out, I saw an old guy with a ratty old blanket over his head.

"You're like him, aren't you?" he said, and he sounded more tired than anything else. "The one with the sword. He wasn't from here…"

"Of course I'm from around here! That's why everything looks so messed up to me!" I yelled at him.

The old guy looked above me, looked like he was trying to scream for a second, then turned and ran away. I saw him falling down as I turned around. Stuck to the side of the building was the spider. I know bugs don't really have faces, but it looked mad. Really mad. It held up two legs and I almost puked when I saw what looked kind of like fuzzy black fingers on the ends.

Big ropes of web shot out from the ends of its legs came right at my head. I ran like hell out of the way but I looked over my shoulder and the spider was still there, chasing me. When we got to the end of the block it just jumped to the side of the building on the other side of the street and kept chasing me.

In a few seconds I got back to where the garage was supposed to be. One of the doors had fallen off its track and there was no little sign with a smiling car. I was sure Paige wasn't there anymore either. I ran inside anyway. I needed a minute to stop and think, and maybe lose the spider.

I hid behind the beat up counter where Paige used to keep her computer and the keys to the cars she was working on, then reached inside my jacket and got the belt buckle out again. Obviously, the thing was important. It seemed like it was what gave that guy his suit, so did that mean maybe it gave him powers? And would it give me powers if I could figure out how to turn it on?

I held the buckle in front of myself a black strap came out of one side, crossed behind my back and clicked into the other side. That was all, or I should say that's all the belt did, cuz then I heard what sounded like lots and lots of little feet coming into the garage. Damn it, I probably left wet footprints on my way in.

Then I got out the card. Just before I put it into the slot in the buckle, the counter I was hiding behind exploded. The spider was flying through it and landed on the wall facing me. I stood up as fast as I could and before the spider tried to kill me again, I shoved the card into the slot.

Right away I noticed I felt stronger. Like, strong enough to punch through the side of my dad's car. The spider pointed its freaky spider-hands at me again, but all of a sudden, it didn't look so scary anymore. I punched it as hard as I could in the face, or whatever, I must've smashed like four of its eyes with that hit. I even hit it so hard it went right through the wall into the empty lot behind the garage.

But the spider pointed its spider-hands at me again and shot that web at me and this time it got me. The stuff covered my whole chest and my hands were stuck to my sides. It yanked me out of the building and I felt like I was flying for a second before I smashed into the ground. It probably should've broken my neck, but with that suit on it only knocked the wind out of me.

I looked up and saw the spider coming down from a jump right on top of me. I flexed my muscles and I ripped through the web, then rolled a couple times to get out of the way before I got up. For a second I couldn't see anything from all the dust it kicked up from landing on the ground, but a second later it cleared up and the spider was running at me. I started to punch it, but then I remembered the guy who gave me the buckle. I didn't want that to happen to me, did I? No, I didn't.

The spider shot more web at me and got my arm and back with the sticky crap. I tried to pull away again but I guess I couldn't the right angle, cuz it kept pulling me closer. Wait, didn't the guy who gave me the buckle have a sword before? How come I made the buckle work, but I didn't have a sword now?

I reached down for the buckle, since that seemed like it was what made everything else work. There were no buttons or anything on it, just the crystal ball you could see the card through. But right then I noticed the ball moved a little when I touched it, and when the spider yanked my fingers made it start spinning.

Light came out of the ball and then the sword was there, floating in front of me with the blade pointing down. I grabbed it and chopped through the web right before the spider was about to bite my arm. I stabbed it with my new sword but it jumped over my head, onto the wall on that side too high for me to reach it, and started running in circles on the sides of the buildings around me. Probably trying to get behind me . And I never used the only weapon I had before.

_Take it easy, Liss_, I forced myself to think. _You've used a bat. This is the same thing, just like a knife too_.

So I did something stupid and stopped trying to follow the spider, and let it get behind me. I turned a second later and like I thought, the spider jumped at me. I let the reflexes that had sent more than a few kids home with broken bones take over. I waited until just before the spider got close enough before I started my swing. The blade cut through the spider's face, slicing its eyes and dumping purple slime everywhere.

I probably killed it, but that didn't stop it from finishing the jump. I got out of the way but I still felt that purple blood splatter on my boots. I hoped to God it only worked if it could get inside the suit, and that it didn't…

…and then things blurred around me. When they slowed down again, I could see windows lit up in the buildings. I turned around and the whole I knocked the spider through wasn't there anymore, but the spider almost wasn't either. The piece I chopped off and the main body, hell even the blood on the ground started to kind of…disintegrate into purple smoke. Soon nothing was left.

Except me. With that suit and no damn clue what just happened.


	2. Chapter 2

Kamen Rider Tarock Chapter Two

Disclaimer: I don't own or make any claim of ownership of the Kamen Rider series. Kamen Rider Tarock and its characters belong to me, and may not be used without express permission. But don't be afraid to ask. I also do not necessarily share the beliefs of any character in my stories, and at least in the case of the ones in this story, do not necessarily endorse anything they do.

The sword, completely clean, dropped out of my hand. I expected it to disappear into thin air, but it didn't. It was the only thing proving I hadn't imagined a giant spider tried to kill me in some kind of even crappier version of town.

I hid behind some of the junk behind Paige's garage as fast as I could. I had to tell her about this right away, but just her. And after what I just saw, I didn't feel like getting any crazy looks for telling stories about giant spiders. So I picked up the sword and went in through the back door.

"Who the hell-" Paige yelled as she heard me coming in through the back, but she stopped as soon as she saw me standing in the doorway. She probably wouldn't have stopped if it was just me, but it was me in some kind of riot suit. With a sword.

"Tt's me!" Then before she did anything else I pulled off the belt buckle. I looked down at my hands just to be sure, and the suit was gone.

"Liss…where the hell did you get that?"

"A guy who got killed by a huge spider gave it to me."

She gave me a look without saying anything for a long time, but then she sat down on the floor next to the motorcycle she was working on. "Maybe you better tell me everything."

So I did. I told her about the buildings changing. The suit. The spider. The old guy who said I was from somewhere else. The guy who gave me the suit who I left back wherever I went. I didn't think it was really that building up the street. At least, not the one there now.

Paige sat there, listening to me and not saying anything until I was done. I started to get worried she wouldn't believe me even after I showed her the suit, but then she looked me right in the eye and I knew she didn't think I was screwing around. With her, I can just tell.

I'm still surprised when I hear people don't get along with their sisters the way I do.

"So let me make sure I'm hearing you right," Paige said after she sat there a while. "You went up the street, but it was different. Crappier looking and nobody was around. And it had giant spiders."

"Or at least one," I sighed. "I don't know if there were more. I don't know what happened."

"Maybe you went to an alternate dimension or something," Paige said.

"I went to a what?"

"You know, one of those places where it's Earth, but something happened in their history that was different from what happened in ours. So their world is different from ours somehow."

"Can people actually do that?" I asked. It sounded stupid, but so did the story I just finished telling Paige.

"You came in here in some kind of superhero suit after you killed a giant spider. I'd say we're talking a whole new level of possibilities. Besides, remember all those monsters we heard about out in Rittersburg?"

"Maybe these are the same monsters, you mean?" I asked her.

Paige shrugged. "I don't know, Liss. How the hell could I? But it's possible, I guess. Besides, it sounds like you've got other things to worry about."

"What? Oh, yeah…the guys with the 'answers.' Guess I better go wait for them, or something. After I try to get lunch without giant spiders trying to kill me this time."

"Be careful, okay?" Paige asked. "It sounds like something really weird's going on."

"Damn Paige, you say that like I'm not the one who was there."

I did go out and get us some quick Mexican food, and the world didn't turn into a crappier version of itself on the way that time. We didn't talk as we ate, though. Or more like I ate and Paige worked some more on the bike I wasn't going to get to ride after all. It didn't really look like much, to be honest with you. But then again, I didn't know a lot about what made a good motorcycle. If it went fast and could handle a sharp turn, that was good enough for me.

After a while I got bored just watching her build the bike and let myself out. I thought about what to do with the rest of the day, but after that whole thing with the city changing and a giant spider trying to kill all of the usual things I did when I was ditching seemed kind of pointless.

But I felt the belt buckle inside my jacket. People were going to come looking for me because I had it. How they'd know it was with me I had no clue, but Paige was right, lots of things were seeming more believable. But the point was somebody was coming for me, but I didn't know who and I didn't know if I could trust them at all.

So on the way home, I took a little side trip.

It was about four thirty by the time I got up to my apartment, so nobody was home yet. Good. I might not've had to deal with any crap about skipping school until the next day if I got to the voicemail first.

At least, nobody would've been at home if I was just talking about people I'd ever met before. When I came in two guys the size of the whole football team came out of nowhere and grabbed me, then dragged me into the living room. An old guy with no hair and wearing a black suit was sitting on our couch, and he looked my way when they dragged me in.

"Good evening, Alicia. I'm frankly a little surprised to see you home so early," he said.

"You're the ones with the answers, right? The one that guy talked about."

"What happened to him?" the guy on the couch asked.

"He's dead. A big spider bit him and he got poisoned. He's back in that crappier dimension."

The guy on the couch rubbed his chin and said "hmmm" to himself. "If nothing else it's a clean removal. He must've given you his buckle, though. Please hand it over."

"No."

"What?" he said, and sounded surprised. The two guys holding my arms squeezed tighter.

"No," I said again. I'd had to deal with crap like this before. "I hid it before I came home. Have your guys let me go or you'll never see it again."

"Don't make this harder on yourself," the guy on the couch warned me.

"You're the one making it harder on yourself," I told him. I knew this guy's type. He was used to pushing people around to get what he wanted. He was honestly surprised I didn't start spilling my guts when his guys started squeezing me, I could see it in his eyes. The big spider, that scared me. This guy, I saw people like him a millions times before. He needed me alive. Besides, I kind of enjoy pain.

Bottom line, he wasn't getting anything until I felt like giving it to him. If I did.

After a second he apparently realized forcing it wasn't going to help him here. "Ease off, boys. All right Miss Decker, take us to where you hid the buckle."

"No."

"What…?"

I had him right where I wanted him, a feeling he'd probably never had before. "You guys wait here. I'll be back in a little bit."

"Absolutely not!"

"Listen, pal. If you hurt me, I've got even more reason not to trust you with this thing. You want it, you have to make a deal."

He sighed, shut his eyes for a second and then looked back up at me. "What do you want?"

"You guys tell me what's going on, and then make up something to tell my parents about why I wasn't in school. And maybe then I'll think about handing over the buckle," I explained. They really hadn't been expecting someone who won a fight with a giant spider to have any balls, did they? Or maybe they didn't know about that. Whatever.

"Waiting here isn't an option," he said, and he did have a point. "Give me someplace I can meet you after you get the buckle."

"There's a little restaurant up the street. The one with the neon coffee cup. I'll meet you there."

"When?" he asked. Typical. He wanted to get some amount of control over this.

"I don't know. It depends on a couple things," I answered. Like if he had his guys follow me, like I knew he would.

He didn't say anything for a while, then he made that "get out" gesture where you wave your hand away from you. "Get going. I've got some calls to make while you're doing your little errand."

So I left. It took a little longer to get where I hid the buckle (no, you don't need to know where). It was about that time when people were heading home from work so there were more people out on the streets, and I was a little more sneaky than I usually needed to be. A couple times I saw one or the other of those huge guys following me right after I left the apartment, but even if they were any good at tailing people-and I figured they probably were-I knew a few things about losing people tailing me.

It was getting dark out by the time I got back to that restaurant I told the guy about. He was sitting at a table next to the window by himself, staring at a cell phone on the table and taking a drink of coffee every couple seconds. He tossed it back into his mouth hard, like he was tired of waiting, and he'd been tired for a while. Neither of his buddies was with him. But I already knew why.

He looked a little less annoyed when the little bell over the door rang and he saw me come in. I sat down on the other side of the table and opened my jacket just enough to show him the buckle was inside.

"Excellent," he said. "Now what about the Card of Swords?"

"You mean this, right?" I pulled the card out of my inside pocket, again just enough so he could see it and not get any ideas about grabbing it.

"Yes, that. So he gave those to you, did he? I'm just glad they weren't left behind too, they would've been so much harder to retrieve."

"So while we're waiting for your friends to get back, maybe you'd like to tell me what's the deal with this thing?"

He glared fireballs at me, but I was closer to the door and had my hand on the back of my seat to show I was ready to run if he tried anything. "I'll tell you what I know," he said and lowered his voice, "but I doubt it's as much as you want to hear.

"The spider was a creature we call a Profane. Just what they are or where they come from, no one knows for sure. However, we do know that this isn't the first time they've appeared. That buckle was created when they first revealed themselves hundreds of years ago, and it was used by a warrior who was called Tarock.

"Before you say anything, no, you've never heard of this. Even we've been unable to learn much about him, or the Profane. They seem to have the power to alter reality on a local level, creating a sort of pocket dimension that's similar to our world yet dramatically different.

"When the Profane came to our attention, we went to quite a lot of trouble to find and recover the source of Tarock's power. I'll thank you to return it now, Miss Decker."

"Your guy's dead, you know. And I got this thing to work. I even killed the spider that killed him," I explained.

"You are _not_ squeezing me for anything else, Miss Decker," he hissed under his breath. "A _massive_ threat is at large here, and no smartass teenager is going to decide they know the best way to deal with it."

"Then you're not listening," I told him. "I can fight pretty well, and I already know how this things works. If it's as bad as you say, do you really have the time to train up somebody else?"

"I'll have them think it over," he said, then started reaching across the table.

"Yeah, tell me what you decide," I said, as sarcastic as I could, and then I was out of there. His goons still weren't around as I got out the door and started running as fast as I could. I made another stop before I went home. Maybe those guys knew where I lived, but they also knew they couldn't push me around, and they didn't know where their precious belt buckle was.

By the time I got back to my family's apartment, it was way past curfew. I almost thought about going to Paige's to see if she's let me crash there for the night, but the people coming out of their holes by that time of the night knew the streets even better than I did. And I wasn't in a hurry to see the kind of attention they'd give a 17-year-old girl.

There was only one light on in the apartment when I got up the stairs to the third floor again. My mom was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book when I came in, but she put it down and gave me the look I'd stopped reacting to a long time ago.

"Liss," she said.

"Mom," I said back and started taking the long way to my room.

Just like I was expecting, she cut me off. "Care to explain what you're doing out so late?"

"Aw come on! It's Friday!"

"Just because your…," she almost sounded like she was choking on the next word, "sister decided to pull you out of school, that doesn't give you permission to be out until all hours of the night, too."

"Wh-," I started, but stopped when I realized what she was saying. I made a deal with those guys to cover for me, didn't I? Seemed like they kept it after all. Paige didn't talk to our parents, not even when I ditched school to hang out with her.

"Can't I go out and do things without it being suspicious one night a week? At least on a night when it's normal for kids to go out and do things?" I said instead.

"Maybe, if you weren't going out doing things that made people suspicious the rest of the time."

"I'm sorry for at least being open about it. I bet grandma and grandpa would have a heart attack if they knew what their precious little angel was really doing when she was out with her friends."

She glared at me again. "I'm just trying to help you turn out better."

"I know, mom," I said and walked to my door. Once I was standing inside my room, I added, "Better than who?" Before she could say anything I closed the door.

I didn't turn on the lights or get changed for bed or anything, I just got in bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. I knew I was tired, but it was one of those things where I knew I couldn't sleep, too.

More things happened to me in one day than happened in a whole year. It was hard to believe any of it, but I'd felt that sword in my hands when I killed the spider. I felt stronger somehow when I put the card in the buckle. And I definitely felt it when those two guys grabbed my arms and tried to squeeze some answers out of me. I could still feel their hands on my arms even lying there in bed.

Then I noticed I felt a little dizzy, and the ceiling of my room started to blur. I rolled out of bed, landed on my knees and ran bent over to the door and out of the apartment. The entire place was dark, everyone was in bed, which was fine with me. I had to cover eight blocks faster than I ever did in my life.

The city already finished changing by the time I got down the stairs. All the cars I passed on the way home were gone from the parking lot and most of the streetlights were out. My stomach clenched. I was afraid the buckle wouldn't be where I left it if things changed, but it was too late. A shadow passed mine on the ground, something with huge wings. That told me all I needed to know.

I stuck to skinny alleys between buildings as I ran, so whatever that thing was couldn't dive down on me. I kept seeing the shadow whenever I had to run across the street, but it still didn't attack by the time I got to the old dry canal. There was a dumpster behind this fast food place, and I ran behind it and stuck my hand in a hole in the back. The buckle was there. I didn't know how if the world changed again, but it was and that was the only thing that mattered. I held it up in front of my waist and the strap came out and attached to the other side.

There was a screech and the thing that'd been chasing me landed on top of a car a little way away. I couldn't see it too good, there was just one streetlight around there, but it had dark brown fur and looked like a person with huge bat wings and toes almost as long as my arm. As fast as I could, I got the sword card out of my jacket and stuffed it in the buckle.

Again, I felt stronger as the buckle started working. The Bat Profane flew over my head, and it screeched again even louder. So loud it blew me off my feet and through the back of the fast food place. I crashed into something that crunched like a soda can and bounced off it. I got up and jumped over the counter to go out the front, but I spun the ball and my sword appeared next to me as I ran.

My sword. _My_ sword? I didn't think about how weird that sounded for long, I could already see the bat flying straight at the glass wall in the front of the building. I ran right at the glass, barely even noticing I'd smashed through it before I was outside. The screech started up again but I jumped straight up, way higher than the roof of the building behind me and angled myself to come down on the Bat Profane sword-first.

That's when I got a little surprise. The bat did a barrel roll and kicked me on the side of my head. I saw stars for a second then I saw the bricks over the front of the restaurant. Coming straight at me. I felt it when I hit that, and I felt it when the bat squeezed my head tighter with its foot. It started going even higher, and before things got any worse I tried to stab up at it with my sword.

Why'd I let myself get into this? Nobody, especially not me, would say I was the hero type. Was it just self defense, knowing there were monsters around who could dick around with reality?

When my sword sank into the bat's leg I knew the answer. The power. All the time, people were trying to prove they had more than me. That they were stronger. That what they thought mattered more.

Who was gonna tell me that now?

The bat screamed as my sword sank into it and its blood dripped onto my shoulder. Then it dropped me. I twisted in the air so I did a somersault as soon as I landed. My arms went numb from hitting the ground from maybe forty feet up, and by the time I was up again, the bat was flying at me again. I tried to lift my sword, but I couldn't even feel my arms. What good would it do me? The bat screeched as it flew over me and the noise blew me off the ground again. My back slammed into the wall of the restaurant and I went down.

I couldn't feel any part of my body after that one.

Right then I saw something moving, on the ground. It was a guy who looked big enough to just slap bullets out of the air, and after I second I recognized one of the two goons who'd tried to pull my arms off after I got home. He reached down for the belt buckle, but then he pushed down on the sides and the sword card came out. He put a green card into the slot instead and I felt energy flowing out of the belt.

"Use this one," he said. "Works better for really mobile enemies."

I felt strong enough to get up, then spun the ball to see what kind of weapon this card gave me. Two big metal discs with a star in the middle appeared and attached to my arms.

"Shields? What am I supposed to with these?"

"Swing your arm!" he said, but then he was running away as fast as somebody as big as him could. The bat was flying at me again, but instead of flying over me it stopped over me and screeched again.

This time I was ready. I ran to my left and for the first time I saw it in action. It was like an upside down tornado coming out of the bat's mouthing, ripping up the ground as it went past. I swung my arm at it like the guy said, and the metal disc shot off attached to this big cable. Like a giant yo-yo. It cut the bat's wing off then rolled back on the cable until it was on my arm again. The bat screeched again, but it was from pain this time. It twirled a couple times and hit the ground.

I swung my other arm and the other disc shot at the bat, but it screeched again and knocked the disc away from its body.

"Use both at the same time!" called the guy who gave me a new card. "Yell 'Pent Glaiver!'"

I did. Like he told me, I yelled, "Pent Glaiver!" The discs caught on fire all of a sudden. Bright green fire. They cut right through the Bat Profane and its body just turned into smoke like the spider one.

Right away everything looked brighter even though it was the middle of the night. Streetlights were coming on, and cars were going by in the street. Before anybody could see me I ran behind the fast food place and pushed on the sides of the buckle like I saw the guy do and the green card came out. I stuck it in my jacket with the other one.

The guy who gave me the card walked around the edge of the little restaurant, but he stayed a safe distance away. Then he smiled a smiled a little. I think. His face looked like it was made of rock, so it was kind of hard for me to tell without better light.

"Yes?" I asked.

"You're not bad after you know what you're doing, kid. Go home. We'll talk to you again after school."

"I'll be waiting."


	3. Chapter 3

Kamen Rider Tarock Chapter Three

Disclaimer: I don't own or make any claim of ownership of the Kamen Rider series. Kamen Rider Tarock and its characters belong to me, and may not be used without express permission. But don't be afraid to ask. I also do not necessarily share the beliefs of any character in my stories, and at least in the case of the ones in this story, do not necessarily endorse anything they do.

I took the Tarock stuff home with me after that. I wasn't really worried that those guys would try anything while I was at home after giving me a brand new card. Maybe they weren't so bad after all.

After I snuck back in and was laying in bed, I looked at the two cards I had, one with a sword and one with a star. How many were there, and what did I have to do to get those guys to cough up the rest?

I probably should've been a little worried about the fact that monsters were real, or that any minute one could suck me into another dimension and maybe kill me before I got a chance to suit up. There'd been two already in one day, after all. Let me just say this: if you ever get a taste of real power the way I did, you can see how soon you stop feeling invincible.

Nobody was around when I got up the next morning and walked to school. I wanted to go even less than I usually did, but I figured it was probably a good idea not to make anybody suspicious if I didn't know I could trust them to keep quiet. Not everybody can be Paige. Or wants to be…

But just because I went, that doesn't mean I was paying attention when I sat down at a desk. I kept looking down at my backpack, with the buckle taking the spot of two textbooks I don't think I'd ever opened on my own anyway. All the strength that had let me slice the Spider Profane to death, it seemed impossible you could make something that could give somebody powers like that. Yeah, it wasn't perfect, the Bat Profane had given me some problems, but I could've taken it out with the red form. Eventually.

Then again, the guy who gave me the card that let me change into the green form had said they'd meet up with me again, after school. Maybe then they'd give me some real answers, like who they were and why they cared about doing something about the Profane. They were kind of rough to be the good guys. But who really is a good guy, anyway?

Most of the teachers had given up trying to get through to most of the kids, and that meant me. And that meant school went by pretty fast if you could find something to keep your mind busy instead of class. I'll be honest with you, somedays that's a problem with me. Obviously, that wasn't one of those days.

Nothing happened for the first couple blocks as I walked away from school. Right before I got to the street with all the fast food places, this guy got out of a beat-up old white car parked a little bit in front of me. I was sort of expecting a shiny black car, so I almost didn't notice it was one of those huge guys from the day before. The one who didn't show up and give me a new card.

"Get in," he growled at me.

I did. Then just in case, I yanked the buckle out of my backpack and put it on before he could stop me, so I could change right away if somebody tried something. If these people thought they were gonna catch me making a mistake, they were gonna have to wait a little longer.

The guy looked at me in the rearview mirror, grunted and started to drive. After a while we pulled up outside a mansion with a high metal fence with pointed tips. The driver led the way to the gate, and it just opened up for him when we got close. The front door opened too, and for like five minutes we walked through so many halls and rooms it wasn't long before I had no idea where we were anymore. I probably could've run, but I had nothing to be afraid of yet.

I still didn't when we finally came to where it was we were going. It was a big empty room, that sort of like the inside of a church except for all the religious imagery being replaced with pictures of stars and cups and swords and things I didn't even recognize. One thing I did recognize was a big circle with a star inside. Kind of like the card that other guy gave me the night before.

A bunch of people in black robes were sitting in a circle in the middle of the room, and they stood up and looked our way when the doors squeaked open. The guy who'd been leading me stayed out in the hall and shut the doors behind me as I went in.

"Brothers, welcome Alicia Decker," one of them said, and I recognized the voice of the one who broke into my apartment and told me the basics. "She happened to be brought along for the ride when Tarock shifted, and was given his buckle when the Spider Profane killed him. Fortunately, she was able to activate it and deal with it herself. However, a second battle last night casts a certain doubt on her fitness to wear that implement."

"Your buddy switched the card on me when I was getting the feel of that bat monster," I said back. "Don't get on my case when you didn't give me a fair shot."

"Perhaps it's not your performance we should be taking into consideration," another one of them said.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. "I killed those monsters. I killed the one who killed the old Tarock."

"You also cut school, hid an item of considerable power from its rightful owners and refused to return it when instructed, and have otherwise shown a strong tendency toward selfishness and irresponsibility," one of them retorted.

I laughed. "How do I know you guys are the rightful owners? How do I know what you'll do with it if I give it back? You hang out in this big empty house with these weird symbols on the walls…you look more like some kind of stupid cult to me than anybody I ever trusted."

"We," said a third one, "are a concern dedicated to identifying supernatural disturbances and eradicating them before they can become a serious danger. That is why we went to such lengths to obtain the Tarock Buckle in the first place. With the Profane reappearing we can't afford to entrust our defense to some…delinquent who happened to be in the right place at the right time, and had some initial luck."

A fourth one raised his bony hand. "Perhaps, brothers, we're discounting this one too quickly. Because of certain…out-of-date attitudes."

Everyone looked at him. Even me. It occurred to me I might have just met the one who sent someone to give me a new card.

"The threat is the same as it always was," the first one said, sounding kind of pissed. "The steps used to combat it need not be altered."

"You are awfully certain of that in spit of only a handful of appearances, Brother," the one who stood up for me before said.

"Why are you defending this…girl?" the one I'd met the day before asked, sounding like he had to force out the last word. "Besides what we've seen for ourselves, we have very reliable information regarding her character. The buckle must be returned."

"You speak too much, Brother," said another one of the nasty members. "Say nothing we would regret her learning until we've accepted her as a replacement."

They kept arguing, but then I had this weird feeling. Like I was sick, and about to puke. I lost my strength and fell down on my knees, and my face started to sweat.

"What's wrong with her?" one of them asked.

"Something's coming. Something…wrong," I said. I got out the sword card and put it in as fast I could.

It was barely fast enough. The floor in the middle of where they were standing cracked then there was a big hole there. Something snaked out of the hole, something that looked like a scorpion's tail. It jabbed into the nearest person before the rush of power filled my body, then jabbed them again. He gasped, then fell down and didn't move.

As soon as I felt the power finish surrounding me I was running toward the tail and spinning the ball on my belt to call my sword. The tail tried to sting me as I got closer, since everybody else had run to the sides of the room after their buddy got stabbed, but I slashed the tail near where it joined with the stinger. It whipped around and almost got me in the shoulder but I ducked and slashed at it again, trying to get the blade in between the plates of dark purple armor covering the tail. But the sweet spot was too small, and I still wasn't used to fighting with a knife that long. It slid off the tail without doing anything.

At least, without hurting whatever the tail was attached to. The hole exploded with pieces of wood flying everywhere. One of the people gurgled and went down as one of the bigger ones went through his stomach. The monster who'd just jumped out the hole seemed to be floating for a second before it landed in front of me.

It was huge and covered with the same dark purple armor as the tail. All except for its face and the gigantic pincers it had instead of hands. It screeched at me and some kind of green slime dripped out of its mouth right before it tried to grab my arms with its pincers.

I jumped back and spun out of the way of its second pincer, holding sword close to myself so it didn't catch on anything sticking out from the Scorpion Profane. Before it could turn and face me I jumped at it, trying to get the point of my sword into something soft. This time, it worked. Something white and red gushed out of where the blade slipped between the plates. That was about it, though. Scorpion Profane whipped its tail at me, and even though the stinger didn't get me the rest of the tail hit me in the neck and knocked me down. I rolled, keeping the sword close again, until I ran into the wall and stopped.

I thought about switching cards, but there really wasn't enough room to use the other one. Besides, it was another cutting weapon. Who knew if it would get through this thing's armor either? But as I got up, I realized the scorpion wasn't paying attention to me all of a sudden. It ran through the doors I came in, and I mean right through them. A couple pieces of wood bounced off my suit but nobody got impaled this time.

I was already after it, and as I chased that huge thing down one hall after another I started thinking about places where a sword could do enough damage to bring it down. Maybe its face, or where the pincers met the arm. But that was if I could get it to stop, since it seemed like it was there looking for something, and it wasn't a fight with me…

The Scorpion Profane started to break away from me, and I ran as hard as I could, but still it went around a corner before I could catch up. I was going so hard I almost went right past the hall it went down, but I grabbed the wall and stopped myself. I might as well have kept on going. Right in front of the corner where the Scorpion Profane disappeared was another hall going off both ways. I looked down both but I couldn't see it anywhere, couldn't hear it either. It sure was quiet for something so big in such a big hurry.

Idiots. Why did they make the house so confusing? The monster seemed like it knew where it was going, which left me, the only person in the house who could do anything about it, left behind.

But then, I felt sick and a little weak. Like I did right before it came out of the floor. It wasn't as bad this time, but maybe I was distracted by the running feet coming my way. Then I saw it.

Another Scorpion Profane. It was at least a foot taller than the other one, and its armor was dark blue with a yellow face and pincers. Poison actually dripped off this one's stinger and sizzled on the floor.

And hanging off one claw was a black cloth bag.

This one didn't try to get away. This one clicked the other pincer shut and ran right at me, then tried to stab me with its free hand claw. It cut my arm when I spun to get out of the way and stabbed at its side. This one was bigger, and so were the spaces between its armor. My sword sank in and I yanked it as hard as I could toward this new Scorpion Profane's back. It made a mad clicking kind of noise and tried to stab me with its free hand again but I pulled my sword out and somersaulted away.

Instead of coming after me again it shoulder-checked the wall and crashed through it. I ran to the hole he left and saw I was facing the front of the house. The blue Scorpion Profane was running for the front fence, and stopped when the first one, the purple one, ran up to meet it. It had a black bag too.

I jumped out and started running after them but they both hung the bags around their necks then dug into the ground with their pincers. Before I could get close enough they got underground and dug away from the house, leaving a big trail of dirt above ground like in those old Bugs Bunny cartoons.

I ran over to the garage next to the house and sliced through the car door with my sword. I'd been hoping for a car I could borrow to go after them. I almost dropped my sword when I saw what was in there in the first spot instead.

It was a shiny red motorcycle with four symbols along the sides. Two I recognized right away. A sword, and a circled with a star inside. Just like the ones on my cards. The others were a cup, like the ones they used back in medieval times, and something long straight I didn't recognize.

The symbols were new, but the colors, the shape, the way there was a storage bag on the left side but not the right side…it was just like the bike Paige had been building. The one that was going to make her rich.

There was no places to put keys in, but I had a feeling that didn't matter. I just climbed on and gripped the handlebars. Right away the engine started up. I steered for the front gate, did a wheelie and smashed it off the fence. I turned it into the street and gunned the engine to catch up with the Scorpion Profane. They were heading right for a Y-fork, and if I didn't stop them they'd probably dig right underneath the building in the middle and I'd lose them.

It wasn't going to happen. I pushed the release on my buckle with one hand, caught the sword card and switched it with the star one, then spun the ball to call my weapons. I waited til just the right second, then I swung one of my shields toward the dirt trail. It cut into the dirt and the trial kept going, but it was about half as thick as before. As my shield, or whatever I was supposed to call the thing reeled back in one of the scorpions stuck its head out of the ground. I aimed the bike at it to run it over but it ducked underground and started digging again, but off to the right this time.

I looked over at the other dirt trail, already at the junction, then turned and drove after the blue scorpion. It sucked, but there was only one of me. If I didn't hurry I wouldn't kill either one. The scorpion dug through the middle of a big house so I drove around the side and busted through the back fence. I drove over the dirt trail on the other side and just as soon as I was off it the Scorpion Profane jumped out. I drove at it, and it jumped over me and landed on top of a bus going by.

I swung the bike around and chased it, then jumped off the back of a car. I crushed the back window, but landed on the back of the bus and got off to fight the Scorpion Profane as quick as I could. It tried to stab me in my uncovered neck with its tail but I grabbed the tail and jumped over its head. Before it could turn and come at me again I switched cards again and grabbed my sword just as it turned around and went for my neck with one claw.

My sword hit the claw and knocked it away from my neck. Scorpion Profane and I kind of dueled like that for a minute, it tried to cut me with the sharp side of its pincer and I blocked it on the edge of my sword. I circled around it then stabbed at the tail, but Scorpion Profane grabbed my sword with both pincers and yanked it right out of my hands. I dropped down on my back, then pushed up with my feet, sending my body into a half-circle motion. As I did I kicked the monster's wrists and knocked my sword into the air. As soon my feet went all the way over I ducked, jumped and grabbed my sword in the air.

Underneath us I could hear people screaming from all the noise on the roof. The stuff dripping from his stinger melting little holes around us probably didn't help either.

I blocked another stab with my sword and tried to jump and slash the monster's stinger, but it saw what I was doing and grabbed me around the shins with its claws then slammed me down on the bus. I saw stars for a few seconds, and then I saw the stinger coming straight for my head.

There was a tiny space between the armor and the actual stinger. I had one shot, and I lay there letting it think I was still out from that last hit before I swung the sword as hard as I could. The sword dinged at the very edge of the armor covering the tail and my stomach bunched up. But before I got a face full of acid, my sword sliced through Scorpion Profane's tail. The stinger fell and rolled off the edge of the bus. While it was still clicking from the pain I turned my sword around and stabbed it as deep in the face as I could. It jerked around but after a second the end of the blade stuck out through its back.

It jerked a few more times, then stopped moving. I yanked my sword back out, grabbed the bag hanging around its head, then kicked the body off the side of the bus.

That probably would've been a lot easier if I knew how to do the sword's special attack. I'd have to find the guy who gave me my second card and ask him about that.

There was a bump that almost knocked me off the roof and I looked over the side to see what happened. The front of the bus had gone over the curb and the door opened and people started coming out, screaming and running away from it as fast as they could. That proved it was a good fight. I jumped down off the back, and not far away I could see the monster's body turning into smoke already.

Before I went and got my bike, I opened the bag. Hey, if I was going to be in charge of this, I wanted to know what was going on. And it still didn't seem like the Brothers were going to tell me anything.

Inside the bag was a blue crystal, almost a foot long. It looked like it was worth a lot, sure, but if Profane just wanted jewels, why would they attack the place where the Brothers hung out? There had to be something special about it, and probably something special about whatever the other Scorpion Profane got away with too.

I got the bike and started it up then drove. I had no idea where I was going, but not back to the house yet. Look, I'm not a kleptomaniac or anything, I was just being smart. Nobody there could protect these things from monsters, obviously, and the way the Profane found them they probably knew exactly where to look before they showed up.

I was almost at the bridge over the river when the street exploded right in front of me. I felt that nausea for just a second before the bike got pushed up and tossed me off. I held onto the bag as hard as I could, but before I could get up something stabbed me in the arm and it went numb. It was the other Scorpion Profane, it had to be.

And it just poisoned me.

The monster smacked me into the rail by the edge with its claw. For a second I felt like an idiot. I just killed one Scorpion Profane. The bigger one. The one with acid in his stinger instead of poison. I won a fight with him on top of a bus. I got back what he was trying to steal.

Then his brother just appears out of nowhere, no dirt trail or anything to warn me, and gets me before I even realize he's there. I was supposed to be in control. I was supposed to be with it. And now I was probably going to die.

Scorpion Profane walked over to where I was, getting weaker every second. But not too far away I could hear something. A motorcycle. Not even mine, another one. I turned my head and could see a guy riding at us. He did something to his belt, and then he _changed_…

Things flashed and then the guy was still riding at us, but he had on a suit like mine. Black with little bits of white, mostly on his mask, and the number "21" on his chest. He jumped off his bike and kicked the monster, then before he landed he grabbed the bag around his neck with his foot and flipped it backward then caught it with his hand.

21 did some kind of karate pose. Scorpion Profane rushed him and brought back its tail to sting. He somersaulted out of the way just before it went through 21's head. Scorpion Profane clicked and turned to attack him again, but he took a running jump and did a jump-kick at the monster's shoulder.

"Jak Kick!" he yelled. His foot glowed and it cut through the monster's arm and cracked the armor on its side. Scorpion Profane clicked angrily and tried to stab 21 with its stinger, but he grabbed the tail and jammed it into the ground instead. Scorpion Profane pulled on its tail, but it was stuck in the street at least for the second.

The numbness from the poison in my system was starting to get weaker, and I spun the ball in the belt buckle to call my sword. I stumbled over to them, but I didn't get there before 21 made his next move. He did something to his belt, right when Scorpion Profane yanked its tail out of the ground.

"Black-OUT!" 21 yelled. His whole body looked like it was on fire, but the fire was black like his suit. It was hard to tell where he ended and the fire started. Then he jumped at Scorpion Profane, and turned into a black and red blur. He flew more than he ran at the monster, and cut it right in half. It turned to smoke and blew away before the pieces even hit the ground.

The numbness was pretty out of my system by then, but I was too late to do anything so a hell of a lot of difference it made. 21 looked up at me, then held out his hand.

"Give me the bag," he said.


	4. Chapter 4

Kamen Rider Tarock Chapter Four

Disclaimer: I don't own or make any claim of ownership of the Kamen Rider series. Kamen Rider Tarock and its characters belong to me, and may not be used without express permission. But don't be afraid to ask. I also do not necessarily share the beliefs of any character in my stories, and at least in the case of the ones in this story, do not necessarily endorse anything they do.

He made a "come on" move with his hand.

I clenched my sword a little tighter.

"I'm gonna ask you nice one more time," he said. "Give me the bag."

"You call that nice? I beat the monster stealing it, the way I see things, it's mine," I told him.

"Awww, ain't that cute? The kid thinks she's tough. Well, I warned you."

He ran over, and I guess I was still feeling slow from the poison because he kicked my sword right out of my hand. I ducked as he went into a spin-kick aimed at the back of my head, holding onto the back with the hand I could still feel.

"You couldn't beat me with your weapon, how do you think you're gonna do now?" he laughed at me.

Believe it or not, you did me a favor, I thought as I moved away from a downward punch from him that smashed a hole in the street where I'd been. I was still getting used to that thing, I had a better chance of winning if I just used my hands.

"Jak Kick!" he yelled and kicked at me as I got up. His whole foot glowed red as it came closer, and I tried to dodge but I was just a second too late. I went flying backwards and through the rail at the side of the bridge. Before I fell too far I kicked the side hard enough to bury my leg into it up to the knee. I wasn't falling into the water anymore, but now I was just a target unless I could move fast.

Or do something tricky.

I threw the top half of my body up to try and grab the edge of the bridge with my free hand, but right then 21 looked over the side through the busted railing. He surprised me by not stomping on my fingers. His mistake.

"Toss me the bag."

"Or what? I give it to you, you got everything you want."

"Change back and I'll pull you up," he said, then reached out for my hand holding onto the edge.

Then I yanked my leg out of the bridge and swung both my legs up in a circular motion. 21 didn't even realize I was on the attack again until my foot slammed into his head and knocked him down. I swung myself in a circle again, but this time I let go of the edge and landed on the bridge again.

21 was on his knees by then but I couldn't let him recover or I might not win this one after all. I held my fists together and brought them down as hard as I could on his back. In my red form, that was pretty hard. He fell down and groaned up, but then I kicked him in the stomach and he went clean off the ground, through the air maybe twenty feet, then hit the street and rolled a few times.

And dropped his bag.

My red form wasn't as fast as the green one, but in one jump I was between 21 and the bag, and in a second I had both bags in one hand.

"Why you sneaky little-" he yelled, but I cut him off with a little laugh.

"You're the idiot if you didn't see it coming. I win, so I get both."

"You have no idea what those are for, little girl."

I held the bags tighter and moved the arm behind me. "Maybe not yet. But if you want 'em bad enough to fight for 'em, maybe they're worth something."

"Black OUT!" He turned into a blur again, but I was feeling fine again and pushed down on my belt to spit out the red card and switched in the green one. I could feel the power changing and I jumped. Jumped high over him and way past him. Then I turned and jumped back the other way, but toward my bike. I got it up and it started as soon as I touched the handles, and before 21 could get on his own bike and chase me I was gone.

After a few blocks I stopped and pushed the side of my buckle to spit the card back out. The suit peeled off me, but the armor and all the symbols peeled off the motorcycle too. Underneath it was a regular old racing bike. A really nice one, but a really regular one. Except there was still no place to put a key.

But the motor kept running and I had a feeling I knew why. The thing was, what did I do now? I got the feeling that mansion, not to mention the places where me and 21 fought the Scorpion Profane would have cops all over them in a few minutes. On the other hand, I didn't know how to get in touch with those Brother guys to find out what I just got back for them. And what it was worth to them to actually get it back.

Something else was bugging me, though as I just rode along trying to pass a place where I could stop safely for a little bit. That was, why didn't I get sucked into an alternate universe again when I was fighting the monster? That was what always happened when one was around before. Could only some of them do that? Did it happen for some other reason and they just happened to be around when it did before?

The deeper I got into this, the more questions there were. And the less those Brothers would probably want to tell me what was going on. Most of them, anyway.

Still, I wanted to find out what was going on. There was the Profane, but there was also that 21 guy and I wanted to say he was working for somebody. Powers like mine and his had to come from somewhere, right? And he had to have a reason for wanting what the scorpion monsters stole, right? So it made sense he was working for somebody else, who knew what the things hanging off my belt were for.

Like I always did, I decided to go find Paige and tell her what happened, and figure out what to do next. It was getting kind of late by then, but if I hurried I was pretty sure I could catch her before she went home. And if that didn't work, I could catch her at home.

If she wasn't there with a "friend," anyway…

But I got caught in the tail end of rush hour and didn't get back to the garage until way after it was dark out already. The inside was even darker when I slowed down as I went past, but I sped up and started toward Paige's place. I was gonna catch hell from my mom for being out so late, but I caught hell from her all the time anyway so who cared?

I went speeding down the streets, almost empty by that time of the night, and I was amazed by how well the bike handled and the power I could feel in it even its regular mode. I wondered if it was really any different if it had those weird pictures on it or not, but then I saw something lying in the middle of the street after a car swerved around it. I pulled up next to it and got off to see what it was.

In the bike's headlight I could just see a little girl holding onto her ankle with tear streaks down her cheeks.

"What's wrong, kid?" I asked her. "Are you okay?" She moved her hand away from her ankle. There was a hole in the sock where blooding was oozing out, so I pressed my hands down on top of it. The girl yelled and tried to push my hands away, but I'm not exactly bragging saying when I say I'm stronger than a little girl. After a minute I pulled my hands back, and the blood stopped. Hell if I was gonna rip a piece out of my jacket to bandage it up, though.

"There, you're not bleedin' anymore. But you better get home and wash that out soon," I said. "Can you walk?"

She looked away from me, then said something I did hear because a car blew its horn at me as it went past. I flicked off the driver and looked back down at the little girl, and this time she was looking at me.

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she said, her voice dry.

"Let's fix that. I'm Liss. What's your name?"

"…Cindy."

"Well, Cindy, maybe you better get home before your family gets worried."

She looked up at me and her voice cracked as she asked me, "What about your family?"

"My family doesn't like me. They don't care if I come home or not. What about you?"

Cindy looked away again. "I can't go home."

"Well where can you go?" I asked. I was in a hurry to get over to Paige's place and tell her what happened. To figure out what to do next. Not to babysit some random kid. Bigger things were going on.

Cindy wrapped her arms around herself and looked down the street. "It's coming," she whispered.

"What is?"

"The fog."

I looked where she was looking, and there really was this thick white fog as tall as me starting to come down the street. Just from that end of the street, like there was one of those machines they have at concerts to make smoke down there. And I might not be a straight-A student, but even I knew fog didn't work like that.

Right then I started feeling weak and went down on my knees before I could fall over and dent my skull on the ground. It was a lot like how I felt right before the blue Scorpion Profane jumped out of the floor at me, but not as strong this time. I was feeling better a second later, but that didn't make me feel any better. Neither did the fact that no giant mutant jumped out to kill me.

"We have to get out of here, kid," I said and tried to pull Cindy up. She screamed and fell back down, so I grabbed her and picked her up as I ran over to my bike. I dropped Cindy on the back of the seat and grabbed the handlebars. The engine roared and I turned the other way to get away from the fog, but stopped again all of a sudden when I saw more fog coming the other way.

I sucked in a breath and wished I hadn't. There was a taste of something that burned as it went down my throat. Cindy screamed, but I looked back and she was sucking in huge breaths, not even noticing whatever was in the air.

Not me. I wasn't used to holding my breath for a long time, and I wasn't sure I could hold it long enough to drive through the fog. It had gotten so thick in fact I could barely even see anything else. If there was something hiding in there, I probably wouldn't be able to see it before it attacked me. And the kid.

I grabbed in my jacket for the cards, almost dropped one of them, and slapped the other into my buckle as fast as I could. It glowed and I could feel my suit forming around me. In a second I took a breath, and this time nothing burned as the air went down my throat. The kid put her arms around me, then looked up at me with these huge eyes. Scared eyes.

Not scared of me, that was the thing. I'd only seen this kind of look a couple times, but I knew what it was.

She was asking for help. Protection, really. I held onto the handlebars and went as fast the bike could back down the way I came. No big black shapes appeared out of nowhere right in front of me as we went, but after about a minute the fog started clearing up. Except…it looked like while we were in there, I'd ended up somewhere else again.

The city was a lot like the one we'd left, nothing looked all crappy and beat-up like the first two times when I ran into a Profane. The main thing was, suddenly it was a lot brighter. Like a day when it's cloudy out, even though it had just been night. Besides that, the buildings were all gray, just like the cars parked on the sides of the street. I looked back at Cindy, even she looked like she'd been sucked into an old photo. Her clothes, her hair, even her skin were different shades of gray.

Everything looked normal, but there were no people around. Just gray buildings, gray cars, and big clouds of fog on the ground everywhere.

Then, it started. I heard what sounded kind of like a voice, talking in a whisper, from behind us. I turned around to look, but I couldn't see anything except the gray I saw everywhere else.

"Did you hear that?" I asked quietly.

"They're here," Cindy said and held onto me tighter.

"Who is? Do you know about this?"

Then the bike rocked, and Cindy just screamed and held onto me tighter. In another second it was off the ground totally, and I looked down and it seemed like the actual fog had picked us up! The fog formed into hands, and they threw the bike at the side of the street. Cindy screamed as we were tossed off the bike, and I twisted so I landed on my stomach and she bounced on my back as the ground came up and hit me.

I rolled out from under her and got up as quick as I could, then spun the crystal ball in my belt to call my weapon. I still wasn't sure which card I'd put in, but the discs that formed on my arms answered the question for me.

In front of us the fog was starting to change again, and arms formed out of it attached to the hands that threw my bike. Then bodies, and heads, and then faces formed out it. Under the waist they were just sticking out of the fog, like they were standing in a swimming pool. They looked like people-men and women, old and young-but their eyes were just solid lumps of gray. Their mouths were open like they should've been screaming. Screaming from fear.

The sound that came out wasn't exactly like a scream. It was like a wheeze, like they were trying to catch their breath after a run or something. They started coming closer, and made this clawing move at the air. That is, in the air toward us.

Well, not for long. I swung my arm and like a giant yo-yo the disc on it shot out and sliced into the fog-people. Their foggy heads shrank until there was nothing left and their foggy bodies sank back down into the cloud.

Cindy grabbed my leg tight, and I found out why in the next second. That wheezing sound came back, but louder. And madder. Somehow. Fog hands appeared on the top of the fog and then fog people dragged themselves out of it like they were climbing out of a hole in the ground. Except this time they didn't look afraid.

Now, their eyes were narrow and their mouths were wide. Now, they looked pissed.

This time I brought back both arms. "Pent Glaiver!" Both of my discs shot off again, but this time they each sprouted five spikes, like stars. They glowed green and smashed the crowd of fog-people and left a big space where the fog had been.

Then right away the fog closed up again and the fog-people crawled out of it and ran closer to me.

One jumped at me and I held up one arm. The fog-guy hit the disc and exploded into little foggy bits, but right away he crawled out of the fog again and looked even madder now. I grabbed Cindy then ran and jumped for a third-story window and grabbed the edge. I wasn't used to climbing in windows with just one hand, but I could swing myself a lot harder and a lot higher in that suit than I ever did without it, and after one swing with my legs we landed inside.

I figured fog couldn't get that high up, and I could drop the kid off for a minute while I tried to figure out what was behind the fog-people attacking us. I let Cindy hide underneath a desk while I looked out the window and saw the fog everywhere, looking kind of fingers clawing at the sides of the building. This had to be some kind of Profane, I thought, but what if it wasn't?

How much did I really know about Profane, and how they could take me to other versions of the city? All the other ones were animals, and their powers were like the things those animals could do, just a lot stronger. But what animal could make people appear out of fog? Or could a Profane be anything? That sick feeling I had right before I got attacked, last time and this time…

And if the fog was the Profane-and having it form into people that tried to kill me made me think it might be-how was I supposed to kill it? I couldn't even stop the fog-people for long, and there was fog on the ground everywhere I looked. How could I fight that even with Tarock's powers?

Cindy screamed and I looked up. Fog was starting to fall into the room from a vent in the ceiling. Before it even touched the floor I could see faces starting to appear in it. Angry, screaming faces like the fog-people outside. I didn't have to guess that in a second I'd be fighting them inside too.

The kid ran over to me, and I picked her up and ran away from the fog sinking into the room as fast as I could. We couldn't keep doing this. We had no place to go, and I didn't have anything that could kill a cloud. I sure as hell didn't know how to get back to the real world, and that was if this thing couldn't follow us there. Which it probably could.

I went around a corner and there, right in front of me, were like a hundred of those fog-people. They grabbed out at me, and from that close I could see they had these claws instead of fingernails and they ripped through the front of my suit before I could stop myself. Cindy screamed right in my ear and held onto me so hard she almost ripped into my suit too.

I brought back both arms behind my head and shot both discs off into the crowd of fog-people. They sliced through the cloud and the fog-people that got in their way, and cleared a path through the fog up to some stairs. I ran for it, but the cloud was starting to come back together even before I was through it.

We got to the stairs, but fog-people had already gone around the middle and were coming at us from below. And from up the stairway too. My throat burned all of a sudden, and I guessed that either the fog was getting too strong to keep out or my suit got too damaged to keep it when they attacked me. I had even less time to figure out a way out of this now.

There was a window on side of the stairway, though…and I could just see a fire escape through it. I ran for it, jumped over the fog-people and turned at the last minute so my back was what went through the glass and hit the ledge outside. Cindy was starting to breathe heavy now, but she didn't cough or gag on whatever was making it hard on me. Probably from all the screaming.

"What do we do, Liss?" she screamed again, again right in my ear.

That was a good question. I looked down at the bags hanging off my belt, the one I hadn't even had a chance to look inside yet especially. I opened it, and inside it there was another blue crystal, but this one was longer and darker than the one I got from the first Scorpion Profane. I looked really close and I could see weird symbols cut into the sides, and I passed my fingers over them but nothing happened. No little reaction from my touch like with the motorcycle.

I got out the other bag and tried to touch the two crystals together, maybe that was how they worked. Still, nothing, and the fog-people inside the building were starting to push against each other to squeeze through the window. There was raspy screaming coming from below too, and a look down showed me the fog was rising up and they were starting to climb the fire escape from the ground, too.

My throat burned again, and I felt my stomach clench up.

The buckle gave me so much power. Three Profane were dead because of me, not to mention one of them was the one that killed the old Tarock. The one who the Brothers picked to fight for them. I never even got in a fight with a monster before then, but I figured out my new powers and beat it.

But there was nothing it could do to get me out of this one. My weapons couldn't stop them and my throat was starting to feel raw. Even if we went up, the fog would get us eventually. If this was a Profane, it was way stronger than the other ones.

Then…I had an idea. "Cindy, you know what's going on, right?"

She nodded.

"What is it? Who are those people in the fog?"

"They're everyone the fog killed. It can make them kill other people. But you can't kill the fog."

I pushed down on the side of the buckle and traded the red card for the green, then I spun the ball to call my sword. It was pointless, but if I had to go down I would go down fighting. Even if taking any of them with me wasn't an option.

"Cast aside the cloud," somebody said, and I almost didn't hear it over all the raspy screaming.

"What'd you say?" I asked.

"I didn't say anything."

"Cast aside the cloud," the voice said again. "Tarock can accomplish anything. Aero Final."

"Aero Final?" I asked. As I said it the sword in my hand shook a little and the blade glowed a soft white. Then, somehow I knew what to do. I held the sword straight up over my head, and said it again. As loud as I could.

The sword glowed white, so bright I could see it even with how there were just shades of one color everywhere I could've looked. A stream of something that looked like smoke shot out from the tip of the blade, then started to spin. Spin faster and faster until it turned into a little tornado. One as tall as I was.

The fog-people in the window had started to spill onto the fire escape and I aimed the sword and the tornado on the end right at them. The tornado ripped right through the wall and sent pieces of brick flying everywhere, but deflected any that could've hit me and Cindy. The fog-people screamed and all the raspiness was gone this time. There was one voice, full of fear, screaming at me. And I know what fears sounds like. Then finally, they were gone and so was the screaming. The fog was even gone inside the stairwell.

I grabbed Cindy and climbed back inside the building before I pointed my sword down. The tornado shooting out of the end got even bigger and knocked the fire escape where we'd been standing right off the side of the building. It blew away the fog-people who'd been trying to climb up it to get us too, and these ones screamed too, even louder. The tornado kept getting even bigger and cut into the bottom of the building where we were and even the one across the street.

A second later I could see asphalt, and a second after that the tornado shrank back into the tip of my sword. I couldn't see the fog anymore no matter where I looked. I sort of expected to see the clouds above clear up too, but apparently real life isn't that cheesy.

"Hey kid, we should be getting back to the real-" I started to say, but as I turned I saw Cindy sitting there, looking relieved but tired. And somehow, even more gray than before. The tip of her hair started to float away like smoke.

I tried to grab her hand, but that just made the gray air it was made out of now slide right out of my hand. Right before the rest of her blew away, I heard Cindy say one last thing.

"Thank you, Liss…"

Next thing I knew I was standing inside a window over a busy night street.


End file.
